


All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

by trailingviolets



Category: Bandom, MGMT-RPF
Genre: Amnesia, Bandom - Freeform, Friends to Lovers, Lost Love, M/M, MGMT, Memory Loss, Musicians, obstacles, sigh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 03:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailingviolets/pseuds/trailingviolets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew and Ben leave Wesleyan, graduating from playing small-time basement gigs to real world stardom.</p><p>(Graduating to a place where they find themselves falling in love.)</p><p>It's only after ten years have passed that they are reunited. At least for Andrew, who's still lost in a moment.</p><p>(And he can't get out of it.)</p><p>---amnesia heartbreak very much included.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Curse is Still a Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Took a bandom prompt from one of my favorite users, who managed to make memory loss seem sexy. In true MGMT style, there's a bit of brooding and a lot of eye-rolling, some glamor and some wordplay.

He vaguely assumed all memory of those sunshine days were forged, cobbled together and stolen from thoughts old Andrew had, if only in daydreams and half-guilty tremors.

They played in a band named with an acronym. College ended a long time ago, and with that they had moved to Manhattan...

_No, Brooklyn...but not together?_

His last image of Ben left blurry and ambling-a field in Connecticut, full of itchy little midsummer wildflowers. Andrew remembered clearing a spot for them between the weeds, the heat of the sun. They'd listened with shared earbuds to Sonic Boom, drifting off to sleep halfway through.

It was as if Andrew never woke up, until now.

New York, New York

***2014

"Congratulations, man." The faintest glimmer of a smile played on Ben's lips as he spoke, detached from his cigarette for a moment.

"What?" Abruptly the lightness disappeared from him, and as he took a drag Ben was ten years older and strung out under the eyes like an insomniac.

"Nothing, A. But you're dating a model, like I said, so there's that."

"You know I don't-"

"Yes you do. Did. Fuck." Ben lit another Red straight off the last one, brutalizing the lighter that was suspiciously clean on the bottom, pulled from Andrew's coffee table in Andrew's trendy apartment.

Often he caught himself staring out the window, and not at the obscenely large T.V., wondering where in hell all his friends ended up, and why they were no longer in his contacts.

"Does she love me?" It was the most open-ended question he'd ever known. 

"I guess so, man, how should I know?" Andrew decided to try another tactic, cornered by Ben's ominous resistance. 

"We made a record?"

"Yeah, a few." Ben paused as if contemplating whether to exhale or choke. Exhaling, he sighed. "Your leads made it good."

"I'm a singer?" Of course he was; _the irony_.

"Yup."

"Mr. Boschman would've flipped."

Ben let go a half-hearted laugh. "I haven't thought about voice class in years."

There was a deafening silence that Andrew felt wrong breaking, on behalf of the person he so apparently became.

_A person who sat on opposite sides of the couch from Ben?_

"What happened, again?"

His father woke him that first morning in the hospital with kind eyes, handing over a glass of water. While he explained the situation, Ben stood outside under a steady pattering rainfall, smoking through his third pack.

"You crashed your car driving to Memphis."

"I was going home?"

"No, you were going for a visit." Middleton equated to their home, last time he checked.

_Maybe Ben agreed, with that skeptical glance?_

"Oh, right. I mean, what happened with us?"

When questioned, Bruce VanWyngarden rose from his chair to pace the room. Later, he confessed that both he and Andrew's mother had known nothing of his life after college. Only what the tabloids reported, his father whispered to the ventilation system, and Andrew thought he might choke on the wetness in his throat.

Ben gave him a wild-eyed look, clearly floored by the truth. "Nothing much."

"I thought it would be different."

"Yeah, me too." The silence crept back, and Ben stubbed out his cigarette, moving to find his boots.

"Wait, are we okay, like, were we?" Ben let himself be called over in the middle of the night, to attend to this. They had promised to always be friends, to be there.

_Wasn't that enough?_

"Ask Matt."

"Who?"

"Tall guy with the bad hair who threw himself at you?"

"Oh. Him and...Chelsea?"

"Camille." _That's right_. Andrew wasn't sure if he got that wrong on purpose or not, or even which was more pathetic after everything.

"What does Matt Asti know?"

"Nothing. But he'll help you more than I can."

"Okay. I shall dutifully inquire." Andrew thought he caught a smile then, but it disappeared in a second.

"Here," Ben tossed something on the table on his way to the door, "good luck."

Andrew barely managed a "you too" before he heard the door slam, leaving him alone.

Middleton, Connecticut

***2005

May of graduation year.

Ben'd feared it all along, his desperation for things to remain the same suddenly more pressing, everywhere.

They were waiting at a bus terminal on campus, bottled waters in hand, arguing about the validity of global warming. Andrew rarely seemed so extroverted or so happy as he was then, when he took Ben's hand, jokingly. He felt the sweat and rough edges of those guitar fingers, and he felt his heart flutter to his throat when Andrew turned to him, eyes blazing. He leaned in, pretending to read a sign posted behind Ben's head, and at the last second pecked him on the cheek, surprisingly tender and shy.

Then the bus came, and Andrew shoved Ben to his feet, blushing.

He figured it was a start, if nothing else.

Thanksgiving Day

***2014

Andrew wanted to go home for his "first" holiday, to the home he remembered in Memphis, but he'd instead been invited to Matt Asti's party, which he and Camille always attended together-when she was in town.

That wasn't so often. He'd seen her twice, once to break the news and once for a week hiatus in her bookings, and she was a decidedly lovely woman, no doubt.

Lovely but poised, in knowledge of her own beauty far too thoroughly. She extorted waiters, never stood in a line. Everything old Andrew had laughed at, resented, scorned.

So he was going to the party alone, as he did all things trying to find his way around a city he was supposed to know.

"You're here!" Matt beckoned from where Andrew was perched awkwardly in the doorway. _He was there, yes, mostly._

"Hey. Um, how are you?"

"Absolutely divine! Everything is going to be wonderful tonight! Drinks are in the dining room but also the kitchen, if you want something straight. The mixologist doesn't start until after dinner but the caterer is doing crudités in the foyer so help yourself, dear!"

He pulled Andrew into an unnecessarily tight hug, smelling of flowery perfume and hairspray.

"I'll go check on that."

He found Ben in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and sipping straight from a bottle of Bacardi. Their eyes met for a moment and Andrew could tell Ben was transported somewhere else by that look.

"Hey?"

"Oh, hi. Here?" Ben held the bottle out.

"Sure, yeah. This thing is so...yuppie. I liked it?"

"You used to pretend to." No venom in Ben's words, only a deep resignation.

"Is this..." He gestured around, hoping that new Ben would still get his wordlessness.

"No, we got drunk in the kitchen before. You took your shirt off and let me draw flowers on your chest in sharpie."

"Did you have all the colors?"

"Yeah, it was epic." The awkwardness between them clearly stretched years, and Andrew was at a loss.

"It was a long time ago, though." To Ben it felt distant, maybe, but Andrew was fucking time traveling.

"So, the music you gave me-that was ours?"

He listened through the album, watching the rain that had persisted since the accident stream down his windows, obscuring the million dollar view. Andrew knew enough about New York to get that his address was singularly posh, a privilege.

Yet despite living so high, he'd fallen far short of all their mystic bullshit in the beginning.

No old friends to hang around and crack beers, no one to greet him warmly at the door, to gush about the Stones, no dogs or sandy shores or.... _Ben_.

"I figured you'd Google it or something-" Ben seemed panicky, all of a sudden, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

"I wanted to know first, did that come from the two of us? Like, working together, hammering it out?"

Ben snatched the bottle back and drained a few ounces before responding, trying to regain some cool.

"We wrote that stuff in a cabin in the woods after touring for too fucking long. You were so sick of my face, it was hard to get you to write for the first couple weeks."

"I can't imagine...any of that." Except maybe the alone-with-Ben-in-a-cabin part. _Not that he had, just._

"I know. It was pretty surreal while it was happening. That record's quality. You had the motivation; you didn't want to be remembered for electric eels and playground synths."

"We produced Kids!"

"We produced Kids."

"But I thought we agreed that was just between us, you know? Our thing."

They'd never agreed to that, except on a drunken night when Ben had jokingly threatened to serenade Andrew. Well, the next morning it was a joke. Waking up with his hips pressed into Ben's sleeping body, hard from some dream about Cindy Crawford, he couldn't do anything but laugh at the reality of it.

"It went platinum. You at least had the decency to act thrilled."

"What about Love Always?" _Or was it Love Always Remains, now? Had Andrew finally won that argument?_

"Yeah, but not as successful."

"I remember writing that for-"

"Yeah, you told me. Andrew, the world is a different place."

Andrew tripped out and thought he saw a ghost one night; Ben recorded him conversing quietly for hours in a dark room, teasing, asking questions. When he returned, he was coming down and exhausted, muttering about the haunted dorms and his future as a sinner. The week after, they set the lyrics down to a new riff they'd been fooling around with.

_The world really is a different place._

"And you're different too," he said. Ben sighed, shifted, and downed more rum.

"I hope so. That kid got his heart stomped on."

There was darkness in his tone when he spoke, and Andrew got the sinking feeling that this hurt was truly down to just the two of them.

They stood in silence again, until Matt called the party to the dining room, finding himself seated as far from Ben as seemed polite.

_Was that deliberate?_

Ben was stuck sandwiched between two Asian developers, and the whole time Andrew caught him leaning back so they could argue heatedly in Mandarin as if he didn't exist.

Not that Andrew was paying much attention. He was seated next to Matt, one of the rare times he had to question someone close to the band about the band.

"You used to sign all your emails the Management, remember? Come on dear, enjoy yourself."

"So that's MGMT! He did that for me?" All their little victories had been his.

"I guess you did it together." Matt's pointed look was almost too much for Andrew's curiosity.

"What happened after the crash?"

"Ben flew down from Brooklyn, and...your father drove up." Matt was momentarily distracted with directing the flow of the servers, and Andrew glanced quickly away, nearly locking eyes with Will, who seemed sweet, for real. Like Ben, he supposed.

"He flew down for me?"

"Yeah, it was weird, you two weren't even talking or anything. He took it really hard for a while, wouldn't stop smoking. Since he lost his parents he's been sort of a loner."

"Julia Goldwasser _died_?"

"And his stepfather a couple years ago, another car accident. Really bad, took them forever to identify the bodies."

Andrew remembered an angelic, dark-haired woman with prominent wrinkles gesturing him to come inside; _it was freezing_. He remembered her soups and her flower garden and he felt his chest constrict for Ben.

"Oh god."

"Relax, it's ancient history."

All the same, Andrew turned his chair to glance at Ben over the huge gardenia centerpiece, staring down into his cheese plate with an expression of intense distance. The space face, they used to call it. Andrew had almost forgotten.

It seemed the memories left to him were becoming increasingly important, and when they locked eyes for a sharp moment, Ben got up to excuse himself, to walk away.


	2. Your Life is a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of the previous chapter, wherein Andrew is drunk and confrontational.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the title, like duh. Wanted to expand upon the differences between Ben's circumstances and Andrew's, their apartments, success, and of course, their views on the time that has elapsed.

It wasn't a great surprise to Andrew that he was lost, and it wouldn't have annoyed him so much either, had he been sober.

During the course of the party he'd downed a few too many fancy cocktails, trying not to give a damn about Ben, and the sidewalk started to spin unpleasantly out before him even as he waved himself out.

A subtle, pattering rain seemed to follow him down the block, the way it does when things aren't going well. He vaguely remembered something about the grid system, about a Chinese restaurant on the corner near his building, but it all ran together, elusive and fluttering.

He missed Connecticut, but his body was so used to the cold, it seemed that summer had never been at all.

***

Ben was admittedly buzzed, tripping on daydreams as much as he ever had on weed and liquor. It was his explanation for walking past Andrew's apartment, again, and for seeing Andrew in every person passing on the street...but wasn't it him? He was so heartbreakingly sure.

The drunk sliding down the side of a wall in an expensive, soaked coat, curly hair plastered to his forehead, shrinking away from the headlights of oncoming traffic. Ben didn't hesitate, to make himself known. How could they let Andrew leave by himself?

"Here now, it's alright. You know me, remember?" Andrew turned his head up, smiling radiantly.

"Beno! I love you so much!"

"Funny." Inside his chest, Ben's heart constricted, making it harder to hold onto the man convinced he was a ghost.

"But I do."

"So?"

"What happened?" Andrew reached up to brush Ben's curls from his forehead, letting his hand linger before dropping it to his side. Defenseless hope in his eyes for some final answer that would be both incredibly damning and oddly cleansing.

"It's a really, really long story."

"Tell me. Please?"

"Maybe someday."

Ben carried Andrew, mumbling and vacant, all the way to his shabby little walkup apartment on the Lower East Side.

Just a couch plunked in the middle of the studio, not even a futon. Ben left Andrew dripping himself dry on the cushions while he went to fix some coffee. He suspected Andrew wasn't as drunk as he had feared, only maladjusted to any life after their college days.

Ben felt a vague stab of something sharp. Pity, anger, nostalgia? He wasn't sure it even mattered. Whatever the case, the Andrew waiting for him across the universe was not the same man who put the oceans between them all those years ago. For the sake of his own young, innocent, skinny, long-haired self, he wanted to treat this Andrew with gentleness. For the sake of those memories, uncomfortably easy to suppress but still impossible to forget...

***

Andrew looked around at the room, dazed. There was nothing on the walls, no television, no bed. Just the couch and a bottle of whiskey on the kitchen counter, and...Ben stirring instant coffee together over the bare sink.  
"Is this yours?" He gestured towards the studio's only window, smudged and weeping rain from outside.  
"Yes."  
"Why live in a place like this?" Already Andrew was learning to look down on him. Probably, it was muscle memory from a preamble of drunken nights felt in reverse. The silence stood in the middle of the carpet for a moment.

"It wasn't quite a choice."

"Come stay with me, in one of the guest rooms." Andrew flung out his arms as if to embrace Ben, who purposely remained far out of reach.

"Andrew, stop, you're drunk."

"No, I'm asking the important stuff. Did-did I know?" Andrew itched to ask if Julia knew, but he stopped himself just in time.

"Yes, of course." Ben forced down the hurt pooling in his stomach; he wasn't Andrew's problem, really. 

"Did I help you?"

"Andrew, you should get some sleep or some caffeine. Or both." Ben turned away to grab a fortifying shot of whiskey, but by that time Andrew was rising shakily to his feet, trying to make his way over to the counter. Hoping that close proximity would still fluster Ben after all those years, and it seemed to. A faint redness crept over Ben's cheeks. He stood stock still, paralyzed to meet Andrew's questioning eyes.

"Tell me," this time with more authority. 

Ben sighed, slumping into the counter. "If you cared, it never showed. You've been here twice and each time you just...Andrew, you laughed in my face."

"Do you have enough to eat?" Andrew nearly choked on the bile rising in his throat, looking down at his boots, which no longer seemed able to anchor him.

"More often than not." Ben recalled the nights when he seriously considered searching the dumpster outside, but then again, the rest of the building was even worse off than him. Only the liquor he got for free, and Ben used it to stop the hollow ache in his stomach.

"Look..." Andrew began.

"What?" There was no malice in his tone, only dread.

"I'm sorry for what happened. Your mother..." Andrew half-heartedly put his hand on Ben's shoulder, letting it drop after a few cold seconds.

"Your father handled the estate, helped me sell the house. I'm fine, A." Ben wished Andrew knew, that Bruce had paid for Ben's ticket to Memphis, united in hoping that maybe Andrew would remember and be more willing to forget and forgive.

Instead, it seemed, he had forgotten in the wrong direction.

"Well, I don't think I was fine, before the accident." Andrew briefly fantasized resting his head on Ben's shoulder, nuzzling into his shirt as he used to in college.

"Andrew..." he was exasperated and yearning at the edges for solitude, for Andrew to stumble away and leave him in the whiskey-bombed rathole that was still all his.

"Ben, tell me," Andrew stepped unsteadily closer to where his friend stood, soaked and grim-faced and older around the eyes. "Did we ever...?"

"What do you think?" He really didn't know what Andrew thought, but judging from those eyes it wasn't exactly the ridicule he'd planned on.

"Did you push me away, when I tried to kiss you?" he knew from Ben's eyes it was more complex than just that.

"No, No, it was you pushing me away."


	3. Maybe a Shadow

Athens, Georgia

***2006

“Home court advantage!” Ben shouted from across the bus, half drenched in sweat, swaying unevenly with the motion of the road beneath them. Andrew hummed in Ben's direction, repeatedly crashing into the wall as he struggled to find a clean pair of jeans. By then, they had developed a routine. Drifting past the group to smoke a few of Ben’s Marlboros in the dusty darkness of the back lot, to confide in each other, enjoying the companionable silence that preceded a performance.

Awed by the longevity of the terror in their chests, alive for days before and hours after. Only young enough to believe that a dim arena would be their legacy, only smart enough to know it was their deciding moment as a band.

Paired off with Ben on these walks, Andrew was oblivious to the urgent confusion surrounding microphones, soundcheck, and the geriatric Casio they insisted on dragging to and from venues, new-at-the-time Nirvana stickers peeling proudly off the sides. It was all always there for them when they appeared, and packed away with them when they spun out of the garage. In this way, Ben said they lived like ghosts, feeding off the energy of other people.

"So...you look good, Beno." Andrew surveyed the horizon, blocked by a buzzing smile, a hand on his shoulder. The warmth of cigarette smoke hot through his shirt.

"Yeah, you too, for not having done laundry in nine thousand years." They fist bumped in solidarity, as they had on graduation day, when everything was supposed to come spinning apart. Yet here they stood, sharing a smoke, winking at the stars and making careless innuendo.

Andrew thought it was a special type of high, this intimacy.

"Andrew...?" A trepidation to Ben's voice that shocked him, that spoke of playful nights on the carpet, of eating chocolate ice cream straight from the carton and discussing art classes.

"Yeah, Ben?"

"What should we do for good luck, man?"

"I don't know." And he didn't, but his heart had a few good ideas, protesting right out of his chest.

"Do you think we should shake hands or something?"

"Like all those corrupt bastards during record deals? No way, Beno, it's us." Andrew had a point; they were close. Closer than close, judging by the picture they made on the pavement in that moment. 

"So a hug?"

"That's our after-show ritual." Flying at each other from opposite ends of the stage, meeting in the middle between velvet curtains and hidden pipes, Ben suspended in Andrew's surprisingly solid arms, turning on a dime around their elation. So near he could smell the coconut shampoo in Ben's hair, the diesel scent of weed soaking them both. Underneath that, a togetherness never allowed by anyone else, in the sea of after-hours parties and sweltering clubs.

"Then...what?" Ben cleared his throat, and Andrew abruptly got the hint. He was angling for something in all this. His brain clattered to a halt, intensely certain that it wasn't cigarette smoke forming a halo around their heads, but rather the steam coming from his ears. In a desperate chant only audible to him, _don't make him say it, just do, just do..._

"Maybe we should kiss, or something?" Faltering, stumbling, but Ben's head snapped up, and Andrew was reminded that the glistening of those dark eyes could make any idiocy irrelevant.

"Really?"

"Of course, you're so pretty and all." They shared a palpably nervous laugh, each off a good octave. They definitely needed this.

"Okay, um, Andy, you want me to start?" He spoke casually, pretending they were just taking turns laying down weird beats, messing around in a whole new way, but painfully familiar, another tension eased by contact.

"Sure, Beno. Go easy on me." In a second, the cigarette was dead, lying spent on the ground.

In another instant, Ben was stepping in close, sweet breath splaying Andrew's curls, resting a hand on his best friend's arm, leverage to reach his height.

Andrew held himself still and quivering until it became impossible to calm the trembling itch in his fingers. He wanted Ben's face on his, their lips and hands and bodies to touch and know each other.

It started with Ben's searching lips, his mouth feeling soft and painted-on as Andrew groaned, frustrated by the chastity of it, how it was more of a brush than a kiss. Pressing back with a gentle need, Ben responded in breathy moans, lips parting slightly. Testing the waters.

Andrew mimicked his movements, unsure how to continue but knowing he wanted to taste the tobacco and sweet tea on Ben's tongue, to shut his eyes and inhale from candied lungs his friend's sheer air, to steal it away.

He felt a hand cup his cheek, mouth opened far enough to touch on the surface of Ben's teeth, thinking how they must look, sweating profusely and ripped open like this. Tongue on tongue, eyes clasped closed. Feeling intently each whispered second, hands in hair, skin on skin.

Ben's ferocity like a rising tide, surprising Andrew, how desperate they had become in the long months of the tour to connect as they had over music in their dorm, alone and lost to the world.

Kissing until their bodies met flush, Andrew's hand coming to gently rest on Ben's back pockets, giving the shorter man an added boost and Andrew the benefit of a more intimate touch; to say he hadn't thought about it would be a pathetic lie.

"Andrew..." He loved how Ben poured so much tenderness into the syllables of his name, torching heat down into his very core. The soft bites he gave Andrew's damp lips as they pulled away making him want to push back into the sensation all over again.

They both gasped for air, lost in the haze of delight, wound around each other like tangled cords. It lasted next to nothing, five minutes max, but meant everything.

In dark times, Andrew would stargaze, searching for the constellations as they were patterned above Ben's head that night, increasingly afraid they would never align the same again.

 Brooklyn, New York

***2014

It played on Andrew's conscience, the twist and turn of Ben's curls, messed and mirthless in the daylight. He wished he knew how to say something unclipped, half decent and sincere. Wanted to make it magically right between them.

"Hi."

"Hey, did I...um...sleep here?" How drunk had he been?

"Yeah, you were too bad off not to stay." Recognizing that look in Ben's eyes saying, I didn't get any rest because of how worried you made me. Realizing he must have slept on the floor; in Ben's sad little walk-up, there was nowhere else to go.

"Wow, I'm so sorry." Wiping sleep off his face with a clammy hand, eventually relearning how to stand in a melee of cushions and drunken feet, head pounding.

Smiling a sad sharp smirk, thinking, I'm really, really not twenty anymore.

"It's fine, man. I got coffee from the place down the street. It's better than nothing." Reminding himself of the sludge on the counter from the night before, Andrew was profoundly grateful.

"Hey, there's this really awesome coffee that _Of Montreal_ gets shipped to them. It tastes like caramel apples. Well, caramel apples dunked in coffee, but you know..."

Trailing off at Ben's stricken expression, at a loss as to where he went wrong. "You okay, man?"

Ben snapped out of it quickly, looking only a little dimmer around the edges. "Yeah, yeah. Didn't think you remembered."

"Yeah, man, they sent me a bag for the holidays. When did you see _Of Montreal_?" Thinking, of course they would always have music in common.

"A long, long time ago." The tone in Ben's voice made Andrew drop all pretense of pleasantries, yet still he pressed on, feeling there was something more to know.

"Was I there?" Ben's eye contact rigid, obviously pushing down at the emotions running through his chest, though which ones exactly remained a mystery to Andrew. That worn look of Ben restraining himself from saying something regrettable was too regrettably familiar.

"Yeah, yeah, you were."

"What was it like?"

"Home show. Last of the tour." Andrew could tell he was getting warmer.

"Oh. Who opened?"

"We did." Andrew's brief expression of shock and triumph, unmet by Ben's solemn face.

"We did!?" A surge of respect for whatever band they had made together that had formed such weirdly beautiful melodies, climbing so far from nothing. Andrew imagining them stacked in sleepless beds next to their idols, cramped but loving every moment.

"It wasn't all it was cracked up to be, in the end."

"What happened?" Thinking, maybe this was the point of no return between them, or where it had started?  
"

We got signed to Columbia. You thought it was a joke, at first."

"But it turned out okay, right?" Ben leaning against the counter, turning to throw his burning cigarette into the sink, running a heavy splash of water to drown out the flame, an unnecessary precaution in such a damp apartment.

"It did for a while. Look, Andrew, don't you have somewhere to be?" No malice, only exhaustion.

"Do you?" Andrew went for playful, and got nothing. Not a smile, not a touch of humor to light Ben's longing eyes. Andrew felt increasingly helpless in the grip of this new reality that had turned Ben into a waking zombie.

"Yeah, I work second shift."

"Where at, man?"

"I'm a dishwasher for a diner in Alphabet City." Ben's voice rang with diminished pride, halting like a half-remembered prayer. Andrew realizing, when I came to after the crash, Ben had been busy digging himself out of the drinking.

Tears welled in his throat, and it was an effort to speak.

"Can I get you something to eat, then? Please?" Wanting to drag himself over to Ben's feet, to grovel for the brotherhood they had shared.

"Do you even know how to get back to your apartment from here, anyways?" Andrew shook his head, letting a cautious smile poke through the clouds.

Ben heaved a sigh, motioning for him to put on his jacket. 

"Okay, then."


End file.
